Home for Christmas
by Dani-Ellie03
Summary: Emma watched Henry go while turning his words over in her head. Had there really been no such thing as Christmas in the Enchanted Forest? If that were true, then why the hell were her parents so gung-ho about the holiday? (or, Christmas preparation with the Charmings)


**Title:** Home for Christmas  
**Summary:** Emma watched Henry go while turning his words over in her head. Had there really been no such thing as Christmas in the Enchanted Forest? If that were true, then why the hell were her parents so gung-ho about the holiday?  
**Word Count:** 3890, by OpenOffice's count.  
**Spoilers:** Up to 3x09, "Save Henry."  
**Characters:** Emma, Henry, Snow, and Charming.  
**Rating/Warning: **T for content and Emma's non-faith in the Christmas spirit. Half-angst, half-family fluff, as per usual.  
**Disclaimer:** _Once Upon a Time_ and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm borrowing the characters mostly because I think I've written a Christmas fic in every fandom I've ever written for, and I wanted to do a Charming Family one for _Once_.  
**Author's Note:** So, I wrote the first draft of this prior to "Going Home" (heartbreaking!) and holy friggin' crap, did the ending for that completely screw over this little story of mine. I was left with two options: not post it at all, or post with a note begging y'all to ignore the episode for the purposes of this story. Since you're reading this, I'm sure you've figured out which option I chose. We all have good imaginations, right? :) Feedback makes lovely Christmas gifts! Enjoy, and happy holidays!

* * *

Emma Swan loathed Christmas.

It was a deep-seated hatred that had its not so humble beginnings in her childhood. A season ostensibly full of family and love and comfort and joy meant nothing to someone who didn't have any of those things. Being the new kid in any elementary school classroom was lonely enough, but there was nothing lonelier than being the only kid in an elementary school classroom who wasn't excited about stockings and candy canes and Santa Claus and presents under the three.

Sometimes the family she was living with would get her something she'd had her eye on … a game or doll or some other kind of little trinket. Sometimes. She'd also had plenty of Christmases when she didn't get a damn thing.

The best childhood Christmas she remembered was the one year she was in a group home over the holiday. The director of that place was one of the good ones, and she'd done her best to make the day special for the kids in her charge. Cookies and milk left out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, a special present left under the tree for each of the kids from the big guy himself on Christmas morning, and a nice Christmas dinner. It had actually felt like a real holiday, which was something six-year-old Emma had sorely needed.

Of course, now she thought it was unbelivably sad that her favorite Christmas was the one she'd spent with kids she couldn't even remember anymore.

By the next year, though, Emma no longer believed in Santa Claus. Each year, she'd asked for the same thing, and each year, she'd never gotten it. She cringed now when she recalled the pity in each and every mall Santa's eyes when she climbed up onto his lap and told him her wish for Christmas. And sometimes now she wondered if the men under the costumes ever thought about the little girl with bouncing blonde curls who needed more hope than anyone in a Santa Claus costume could ever give.

Unfortunately for Emma, her son adored Christmas. She wasn't quite sure about her parents, but she knew that Mary Margaret Blanchard liked Christmas, at least. Mary Margaret had gone all out last year with the lights and the decorations and the cookies and the present wrapping party. (Yes, a present wrapping party. Basically, she'd gotten Emma to help her wrap the little presents she had bought for her students by promising to make her favorite dinner. By the end of the afternoon, Emma had tape in her hair and was convinced she'd given herself carpal tunnel.)

On some level, Emma had known Mary Margaret was playing up the Christmas stuff for her sake, so she'd tried to enjoy all the trappings for Mary Margaret's sake. She hadn't complained when Mary Margaret tuned the radio to a station playing nonstop holiday music, and she hadn't had the heart to be angry with Mary Margaret when she'd woken her up at six on Christmas morning to open presents.

And if Emma was being honest, Mary Margaret's efforts worked. Though Emma certainly didn't become a reformed Ebenezer Scrooge or anything, it had indeed felt nice to have someone with whom to share the holiday.

Now here she was, faced with it again. She knew she should be happy. She had a family now, and wasn't that what the season was all about? However, the twenty-odd years' worth of Christmases without a family had caused her resentment of the season to grow into a monster.

So when she arrived downstairs to find Christmas music playing on the radio while her son and parents dug through boxes of decorations, she groaned. "We're doing this today?"

"Yep!" Henry exclaimed, either oblivious to or ignoring her foul mood. "None of us have any plans, so Gramma says it's a perfect day to decorate!"

Emma raised her eyebrows. It was barely eight in the morning and the kid was already sugar high, a feat that very rarely occurred in his grandmother's presence. As Emma glanced around the room, she spotted the likely culprit on the kitchen island: an opened box of candy canes with two missing.

Had her mother actually allowed Henry to eat candy canes for breakfast? Hell, if Emma ever tried that, Snow would most likely give her a _look_ and tell her to eat some real food.

As a matter of fact, maybe she should test her hypothesis. She snagged a candy cane from the box and stepped casually into the living area. "It looks like a Christmas store threw up in here," she said to no one in particular. Because in all seriousness, it did.

Before she could even attempt to unwrap her peppermint treat, Snow snatched it from her hand. "Oh, Emma, honestly. Would it kill you to have an actual breakfast?"

Yep, just as she'd thought. Still, the sentence poured from Emma's mouth before she could stop it. "How come Henry got to eat candy canes for breakfast?" Holy crap, she was whining. Like a freakin' little kid, she was _whining_! She cringed as she felt the heat rush up her cheeks.

A wry smile tugged at her mother's lips. "Henry got to eat his candy canes after he had some cereal."

Emma huffed, then spun on her heel and marched back into the kitchen. She pulled the box of Lucky Charms down from the cabinet.

The look on Snow's face as she watched her daughter pour what was probably the largest bowl of Lucky Charms ever poured was highly comical. "You're going to be the death of me, aren't you?"

"What?" Emma shrugged, grinning smugly at her mother. "It's cereal."

Snow just sighed.

* * *

Christmas music continued to play softly on the radio as Emma sat at the kitchen island, dragging her spoon through her cereal. Honestly, if she never heard "Santa Baby" or "The Little Drummer Boy" again, it would be too soon. The least the radio station could do was play some of the more fun Christmas songs. She remembered thinking "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" was funny when she was a kid, at any rate.

She watched as David tried to organize the limbs of the artificial Christmas tree, which was a holdover from Mary Margaret's cursed days. Upon finding out last year that Emma had never had a real Christmas tree, Mary Margaret had leaped at the opportunity to get one for her. Which was a really lovely gesture and would have been utterly perfect, except for the later discovery that Emma was allergic to pine. By the time the holiday rolled around, she was sneezing almost constantly. Mary Margaret had of course offered to get rid of the real tree and trot out her old artificial standby, but Emma had insisted that it wasn't necessary and simply stocked up on antihistamines. This year, they bypassed the real thing entirely.

After the tree limbs were organized and accounted for, her family buried themselves under stray lengths of garland, strings of lights, and more ornaments that anyone could possibly fit on a Christmas tree. It was a friggin' mountain of Christmas, and that wasn't even including all the little knickknacks and tchotchkes that Mary Margaret had apparently collected over the years. There was still the manger and the small Dickens village to set up, and the mere thought of it was exhausting.

Still, despite the big giant mess and the chaos, her family looked like they were having fun. She really wished she could get into the holiday spirit, but all the season did was remind her of how many Christmases she'd either spent alone or with people who didn't give a crap that she was with them.

She honestly didn't know which one was worse.

_It's different now_, she kept trying to convince herself. She had people now who clearly loved her and were clearly thrilled that she was with them. She had her parents and her son. Yes, she had to share Henry with Regina and Neal, not that Henry seemed to mind. As a matter of fact, he'd been thrilled. "You mean I get _three_ Christmases this year?!" he'd exclaimed in very-excited-kid fashion. But even having to share him was infinitely better than not having him at all.

And yet, still deep within her was that sad, jaded little girl who'd had Christmas mean nothing one too many times. That sad, jaded little girl who realized far too young that there was no white-bearded man in a red suit who granted Christmas wishes. Because if there truly was, he would have given her what she'd asked for.

The magic of Christmas had been taken from her long ago, and she wasn't quite sure how to recapture it, even with all the magic Storybrooke and she herself had to offer.

She was so lost in her morose mental wanderings that she hadn't even noticed that Henry had slipped away from his grandparents and taken a seat next to her at the island. She was startled back to awareness when his little voice asked, "Mom? Are you okay?"

She blinked and glanced first at Henry and then down at her cereal. The marshmallows were bloated and the oat morsels had long since gotten soggy. She pushed her bowl away while snagging another candy cane from the open box. "Yeah, kid, fine," she said, though even she could tell that she didn't sound at all convincing.

Still, Henry nodded and let her statement stand. For a while, at least. After a long beat of silence, he said, "I know it's hard for you. The family thing, I mean."

"It's not," Emma started to insist, but the look on her son's face stopped her. He always could see through her, see over the walls and into her real self, and he was doing so now. "All right, it is hard. It's not that I don't want to do the family thing, though, Henry. It's just that it's going to take some time for me to be comfortable with … all of this." She waved her hand at the Christmas paraphernalia, hoping he would understand that it was the holiday that was stressing her out and not her family.

He must have understood because he nodded before pushing himself off the stool next to her. "You know what Gramma told me this morning?" he asked as he snatched another candy cane from the box. "She said that there wasn't Christmas in the Enchanted Forest. There was something similar, I guess, but not exactly like Christmas. Kind of weird, huh?"

"Yeah, kid," Emma said softly. "That is kind of weird."

He smiled at her and then went back to help his grandparents put together the tree. She watched him go while turning his words over in her head. Had there really been no such thing as Christmas in the Enchanted Forest? If that were true, then why the hell were her parents so gung-ho about the holiday?

And then it hit her: they were doing it because she and Henry were used to it. They were trying to make their own new family traditions, and if they were trying, well then, so could she. Emma dumped the rest of her cereal, set the bowl in the sink, and joined her family in the living area. "What can I do to help?"

The loving and pleased smiles on her parents' faces were nothing short of miraculous. It was as if they'd been waiting for this very moment … and perhaps they had. After a beat, David held up a hopelessly tangled string of lights. "I hope you like puzzles, because this thing is certainly an enigma. Care to try your hand at it?"

"Sure," she replied, smiling almost shyly as she took the lights from his hand. Then, because she felt the moment needed a little levity, she added, "Did you ever wonder what the hell the lights do in storage from January to November to end up like this?"

"Every single December," Snow replied, smirking at her daughter.

* * *

As Emma watched Snow surreptitiously remove the ornaments her family was placing on the tree and rehang them in different spots, she realized with a jolt that she was actually having a bit of fun. She was amused, at any rate. Watching Snow's inner schoolteacher attempt to force visual balance onto what was a very haphazard and chaotic process was rather funny.

"What are we going to do after we get the tree decorated, Gramma?" Henry asked as he hung a red glass bulb next to a red wagon. Emma paused to watch, and sure enough, after Henry turned away, Snow moved the red ball down to a branch closer to the bottom of the tree, far away from any other ornament that was red.

There was of course plenty to do – the tree was the only decoration they'd touched so far – so Snow's response surprised Emma. "I was thinking we could bake sugar cookies." She winked at her grandson. "Only if you're interested, of course."

Henry beamed. "I'm definitely interested!"

The smile on Snow's face indicated that she knew he would be. "Why don't you and I get the ingredients for the cookies collected? There are only a few ornaments left; Charming and Emma can finish up and call us when they're ready to top the tree and light it."

Emma's breath caught in her throat. Her mother was going to let her and her father put the finishing touches on the tree? Together? "You actually trust us not to screw up your visual balance?" she asked, because the real observation – that Snow wanted Emma to be able to share a moment decorating the tree with her father – was too touching to voice.

"Of course," Snow replied, her smile now indicating that she was answering Emma's unspoken question as well as her spoken one. Her next sentence, though, was solely in answer to Emma's spoken question. "Although, I do reserve the right to rearrange things later."

Everyone chuckled at that, and Snow and Henry headed to the kitchen to gather the ingredients for the cookies, leaving David and Emma together.

Emma kept an eye on her father as she carried a snowman ornament from the open box to the tree. Sometimes she was still a little awkward around him, though she wasn't quite sure why. Well, okay, she did know why. The realization that he was her father was still new enough that it was disconcerting sometimes.

He quite clearly adored her, more than she ever thought someone could adore her. The sheer amount of love and pride that swam in his eyes every time he looked at her was so far beyond her normal understanding and experience that she didn't always know how to handle it. She was afraid of somehow screwing it up, afraid of doing something or saying something that would make that love and pride vanish.

Because she'd had that happen before. She'd had people promise to stay with her and then leave her. She'd had people promise to love her and then abandon her. And though she no longer doubted the love her parents had for her, she was absolutely terrified of losing that love, however it might happen.

And yet, here it was, her first Christmas with her parents. Her first time decorating the tree with her father. It was wonderful, even if she couldn't stand Christmas, but it was also utterly terrifying.

"Are you all right?" he asked her, drawing her from her reverie.

"Yeah," she replied quickly. "Just thinking."

"Penny for your thoughts." When she frowned at him, he smiled kindly at her. "You look like you need to talk."

She shrugged. She hadn't intended on saying anything, which was why she was surprised when she heard herself say, "This is my first real Christmas." The love and pride in her father's eyes remained and were now joined by a touch of pain and a large dose of comprehension, which made her comfortable enough to continue. "Well, technically, I guess it's my second, because of last year, but we didn't know the whole truth then. I spent Christmas with my mother and didn't know it. This year, though ..." Emma trailed off, unsure how to properly put into words what she was feeling

"I completely understand, Emma," David said softly. He reached out to tuck of a lock of her hair behind her ear. She tensed at first but then relaxed enough to allow him to do it. He smiled at her, resting his hand on the side of her head. "It's my first real Christmas, too."

It was, wasn't it? He'd been in a coma in Storybrooke for twenty-eight years and all of David Nolan's memories of Christmases past were false. And during Christmas last year, he'd still been cursed into a life he didn't want. At least Mary Margaret Blanchard had been with Emma. David Nolan hadn't spent the holiday with either of them.

"So thank you for giving this Christmas a chance," David continued in a whisper. He brushed his thumb down her cheek before removing his hand from her face.

Well, crap, now Emma felt a lump forming in her throat. Fantastic. "You're welcome," she whispered, then cleared her throat and reached for another ornament.

Again, David smiled at her and, deciding not to push any further, let her take the ornament to the tree. He followed behind her and hung a blue glass ball next to a blue drum. Emma looked up at him with a frown; he had to know by now that Snow would end up moving that sucker later.

And of course, he did. He winked at her, and she grinned. Snow would definitely rearrange it later, but for right now, it could stay.

* * *

Emma was one hundred percent convinced that they would be finding flour in various corners of the kitchen for years to come. They had made more cookies than any of them knew what to do with. Snow and Henry had actually gotten out the frosting and the cake tips and had decorated sugar-cookie snowmen and Santa Clauses and Christmas trees. David and Emma both took the easy way out and simply sprinkled red- and green-dyed sugar crystals onto theirs.

They had also made an absolute mess. Emma had swept the floor twice and was still picking up flour on her socks every time she walked through the kitchen.

The apartment did look lovely, though. The tree was lit with a rather pretty angel on top, and Snow had rearranged all the ornaments to her liking. Though the rest of the family teased her, the visual balance did make the tree come together nicely. They'd set up the manger and the village on the shelves, and the knickknacks had found temporary residences on end tables and shelving. Snow had even hung stockings with everyone's first initial along the brick wall since she didn't have a fireplace.

Emma, who'd managed to find a little bit of Christmas spirit after the talk with her father, if only for his sake, had strung the lights they didn't put on the tree around the door and on the railings of the staircase leading up to the loft. Henry adored it and had promptly taken many, many pictures with Emma's phone.

_Maybe this Christmas thing won't be so bad_, she thought as she eased down on the metal steps. From this vantage point, the fruits of their labor was even more apparent.

After a moment, her mother joined her on the steps, handing her a small plate piled with cookies. Emma frowned at her. "I thought these were for Christmas." Still, she accepted the plate because she never turned down sugar cookies.

"Are you kidding?" Snow asked her through a light chuckle. "Christmas is still a couple weeks away. I am under no delusion that these cookies are even going to last the next few days. You and Henry and even Charming will be sneaking one here and one there, and the next thing you know, there'll be three cookies left. We'll make more on Christmas Eve."

Emma smiled as she bit into a cookie. That was most certainly true. "We did a good job," she said after she'd swallowed.

"I know. I had one earlier when they were cooling."

"Well, yes, but I was talking about the apartment. It looks really nice."

That got Snow to smile. "We did a wonderful job, you're right." Then her smile turned sad, and Emma braced herself for what was surely coming. "I know Christmas isn't your thing, Emma, and I can't help but feel like we're to blame. I'm sorry we couldn't be there for your other Christmases."

Emma swallowed hard but smiled sadly back at her mother. She was sorry, too. Maybe then Christmas would be her thing. "I know you would have been if you could have." Which was true. It didn't change anything, but the truth helped, made it hurt a little less.

Still, there was something else Emma wanted to bring up, and she couldn't be emotional when she did so. She cleared her throat and glanced down at her plate of cookies. "Henry told me that you didn't have Christmas in the Enchanted Forest."

"We didn't," Snow confirmed. "Not exactly. There was a similar celebration at the same time of year, but the trappings were not at all the same."

Now Emma looked her mother in the eye, wanting to get a read on her face when she answered her next question. "So you and David … you did all of this for Henry and me?"

"Yes."

Her mother's obvious love for her shone in her eyes, causing Emma's own eyes to blur with tears. Maybe, with the love of her family, she could learn to overcome the pain of her past Christmases. Maybe Christmas could finally be about family and love and comfort and joy for her, too.

When she felt Snow's arm wrap around her shoulders, she blinked back her tears. "Thank you," she whispered to her mother.

Snow didn't even to ask what the gratitude was for, because she already knew. This little experiment of Snow's of forcing Christmas on Emma may have been a gamble but it had paid off. "You're very welcome, sweetheart," was all she said before pressing a soft kiss to the side of Emma's head.

Emma closed her eyes, for once savoring the affection. Snow's arm tightened in response, and Emma just let her hold her. And when she opened her eyes and gazed out over their Christmas-ed up apartment, she wondered if maybe the magic hadn't gone out of Christmas after all. Maybe there was a white-bearded man in a red coat who granted wishes, but on his own timetable and not hers.

Because she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she now had the one thing she'd always wanted for Christmas, the one thing she'd asked all those mall Santas for all those years ago: a real home and a real family with whom to share it.


End file.
